Just to point out, Safaricom didn't create Mxit, they're importing this from South Africa. Basically, using their marketing muscle to get major inroads in the data space (as you pointed out). How is MTN SA losing KES 80M per day? Aren't they making some of that back on data charges alone? Mxit isn't tied to just one network, you can access it from anywhere you can get a data signal, so Zain and Yu will work here too. Erik Hersman www.whiteafrican.com | @whiteafrican On May 21, 2010, at 11:55 AM, David Kiania | Asentric Consulting Ltd wrote:
For all the flack Safcom gets on this list we have to give them marks for innovation and forethought. In today's newspaper they have launched Mixit (http://www.mxitlifestyle.com/) is a Peer-to-Peer IM client that runs on mobile-to-mobile and desktop-to-mobile. While some see this as cannibalizing SMS revenues, it's a stroke of genius because they still stand to make cash from the data traffic as opposed to loosing it to a competitor all together. (Rule No. 4 in business: Cannibalize your revenue and business model before your competition does it for you)
After declining to support Mixit as a product, MTN SA now looses more than 8M Rand (KES 80M) a day, and the sad part, the app runs on their platform on either gprs/edge.
Kudos Safaricom, You Rock!
Kiania _______________________________________________ Skunkworks mailing list Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks ------------ Skunkworks Server donations spreadsheet http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AopdHkqSqKL-dHlQVTMxU1VBdU1BSWJxdy1f... ------------ Skunkworks Rules http://my.co.ke/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=94 ------------ Other services @ http://my.co.ke